Back At It

One way or another, I am getting older. Almost a year has passed since my last blog post, meaning I am almost a year closer to the real world. I've shifted my focus to school and finding internships that could lead to a full-time offer. The results have been rewarding - I landed a nice internship this past summer - but the ability to stay on top of repairing watches has faltered. The biggest trouble is finding time to research auctions and the hundreds of watches to find that one good offer. 

I got extremely lucky with this pocket watch - the first that I've fixed in nearly six months. It's a beautiful silver repousse with a painted dial. According to the hallmarks, it was made in 1768! Hard to verify because I haven't done much digging on the maker - William Byfield - but it certainly fits the period. 

I was most surprised by the color of the dial. It seems as if it were painted yesterday - still vibrant. The case also surprised me a bit. It took about three hours of polishing to get it to its current condition. This would've been the perfect piece to do a before and after shot, but as always, I forgot to take pictures before fixing it up. 

No other watches on queue at the moment, but I'll try to step up finding those good opportunities. Eight months between posts is too long! Stay tuned. 

 

This post is dedicated to my friend Rebecca. Thanks for enjoying my snapchats of watches. 

Hamilton, Hamilton, Hamilton

When I first started fixing pocket watches, I exclusively worked on American timepieces from the early 1900s - these watches were cheap and easily available on eBay. After six months to a year, I was able to afford European watches that were more interesting to me and seemed to offer the best value when flipping. For two years, I then worked exclusively on the Swiss and English watches I've been posting here (with the occasional Elgin). There has, however, been a lull during which I have not been able to find good deals on European watches. As such, I have found lots (and I mean lots) of opportunity in gold-filled Hamilton watches. 

The watches below are a small sampling of the fourteen or fifteen Hamilton watches I've fixed in the past two months. I still prefer my European movements, but these are quite nice! 

Hamilton 940

Hamilton 940 Movement

Hamilton 974

Hamilton 974 Movement

Hamilton 992

Hamilton 992 Movement

Hamilton 920

Hamilton 920 Movement

A Nice Surprise - Duplex Escapement

I bought an R.F. Cowderoy pocket watch movement a couple months ago for cheap - $25 (and free shipping). I hadn't thought much of it except that it would be an easy fix and a quick chance to double or triple my money.

Fast-forward to this week... I finally had a chance to take the movement apart. The moment I unscrewed the balance cock, I heard the whizzing of the gears as they turned to release the energy wound up in the mainspring. Uh oh... I thought for sure I had broken a piece. Normally, the pallet fork in lever escapements would prevent that fast release of energy - which is usually bad news as that puts unnecessary stress on the gears and pinions. I quickly unscrewed the balance, and much to my surprise, this movement didn't have a normal lever escapement at all.

I stumbled upon a rare gem.

A duplex escapement peeked through the movement, and I knew that this $25 movement was easily worth more than ten times that. The quality of the movement also showed through in that the pieces went together absolutely perfectly. Once I had the gear train all placed in the main plate, all the pinions fit into their respective jewels the moment I rested the top plate on the parts - made my life a whole lot easier.

I had been travelling for two months this summer, so unfortunately haven't had as much time to fix watches. But with about a month left till going back to college, hopefully I'll be able to restore a few more interesting pieces and post them here.

Spring Break Fixes

College has been the most fun and rewarding time in my life thus far. Whether it's meeting new (lifelong) friends or taking classes with phenomenal professors, my time here is certainly worth the heavy, heavy costs of tuition. When it comes to watch repairing, however, I didn't even bother bringing my tools to school with me. I have only found time to fix watches when I return home for break, which I finally did a few weeks back. I fixed close to ten watches, but the two I have pictured below are really the only ones worth sharing.

First up, we have a Henry Sandoz 5-minute repeater with chronograph. This was easily the most complicated movement I have ever come across, with well over a hundred pieces. The more complicated the more fun to fix! For those of you who aren't familiar with 5-minute repeaters, they function similarly to quarter repeaters. The primary difference is the center snail - quarter repeaters have four slots while five-minute repeaters have twelve. Because of the different center snail, 5-minute repeaters chime the hour and then the closest 5-minute interval. For example, if the time is 3:15, the watch will chime thrice for the hours and thrice for each 5 minutes past the hour.

Sandoz Family Crest with "sine dolo"

And second, an American fusee movement. I jumped on the opportunity to purchase this watch because the average American fusee movement is considerably rarer than the average European fusee movement. Why? Elgin, Waltham, Illinois, etc. all dominated to American pocket watch market, and the large majority of the movements they made were not fusee movements. Movements like the one here by J.W. Tucker & Co. were of higher quality and, as a result, lower in production quantity.

I have more watches waiting to be fixed, but those will be for another post. 

Another Nice Elgin

I seldom purchase American pocket watches because I have little experience dealing with them - in fact, I hadn't bought an American watch in two years - but I came across two fine Elgins recently that I couldn't pass up. The first is the doctor's watch in the previous post. And the second is a nice 6s Elgin from 1893. Although the movement itself is far from spectacular, the case is quite exceptional: a gold multicolored, scalloped case with a diamond in the back. 

So I Made a Light Box... (Elgin Doctor's Watch)

I googled "homemade light box" after seeing the hundreds of delicately taken pictures on watch forums - most if not all required controlled lighting. The search resulted in a rough converted USPS box with holes cut out and paper towels taped the the sides - emphasis on the rough. No matter how ugly the is, however, I have taken some incredible pictures! It took awhile to learn exactly how to maximize the effects, but the photographs I recently took of an Elgin doctor's pocket watch are by far the best pictures of a watch I have ever taken - that first one in particular. 

Hope you enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them!

My Ever-growing Ledger

This is a quick post about one of my favorite parts of selling watches: filling in my ledger. I'm a fairly old-fashioned guy (go figure, I'm interested in antique watches), so when I began my watchmaking hobby, I liked the idea of a hand-written ledger. I've only filled out about four pages worth (roughly 40-50 watches), but the simple act of writing in yet another sale on one of the lines is surprisingly rewarding.

On each line, I have the maker, city, year, case, running condition, serial number, other markings/features, date sold, and price sold of the watches. For obvious reasons, I've cut off the prices sold in the picture below. The different colors correlate to different regions of origin - red is for Swiss watches, blue for English, and green for American and others.

Again, this wasn't meant to be a long and terribly intriguing post, but it goes more into the inner-workings of my watchmaking hobby, which I hope is of some interest to you!

Off to College

This will be my last post for a few months as I'm already at college with no watches to fix. Meant to post pictures of the following watches several weeks ago but here they are now:

Arnold Charles Frodsham Simple Split Seconds Chrono

Poitevin Geneve Independent Jumping 1/4 Seconds

Pivoted Detent Chronometer

Tarts London Repousse

I've never mentioned this before, but I'm an art history nerd. In short, I took an intro to art history course in high school that sparked my passion for this other "old-people" interest. I vividly remember a class period during which my teacher flashed an image of a gold repousse plate of some sort then asking the students if we knew the term for such decoration. My hand shot up, and I quickly blurted out "repousse." From my days of drooling over antique watches, the term was a no-brainer. Since those days, I had always dreamed of acquiring a repousse pocket watch. Fortunately for me, that day came in the form of a "Dutch forgery."

Tarts pocket watches are considered "pseudo-London" pocket watches. These have been known as "Dutch-forgeries" rather than genuine watches from England. Tarts is the most prolific of these watches with John Wilter being another of these "pseudo-London" watches. These watches are usually of lesser quality  which is apparent if you were to compare pictures of this movement to actual English watches of the same time period - the finishing is much cruder with "choppy" edges rather than smooth and screws that look more industrial than refined. 

The overall condition of the watch is great but at the same time not so. The repousse case should be silver gilt, meaning that it should be gold plated overtop the sterling silver base. Most gilt watches have a brass base so that once a watch has been thoroughly worn through, the dull brown "interior" is in full view. This case being silver, however, I was still able to polish it nicely though not to excellent condition because it should be completely gilt and not silver. The inner case (not pictured) is of much better condition having its gold coat and all. I was able to confirm that the watch is silver gilt and not simply gilt because of the hallmarks within the inner case. 

Another neat feature of the watch is its champleve dial. The dial is made to have troughs and raised portions. Traditionally, champleve is combined with enamelling so that the enamel fits right into the carved out areas. What I have seen with watches, however, is that the troughs are left as is, unfilled. The dial is also of gold tone, but I was unable to test the gold content (I should really invest in a gold testing set...).

Vulliamy Half-quarter Dumb Repeater (repeater a toc)

I was fortunate enough to purchase this watch at a phenomenally low price and sell it for more than double - a little bit of knowledge goes a long way in antiques dealing! I didn't even take the watch apart as it was working and repeating already. I did, however, take extra time to research the history behind Vulliamy and this particular type of repeater.

SO, here is what I discovered:

The movement consists of a cylinder escapement and dumb repeater mechanism combination which is rare in itself. The addition of the Vulliamy name, which can essentially guarantee quality, ups the rarity tremendously. What I mean by quality is that nearly every single part of this watch is finished to an exceptional degree. I realize that I'm using these large and overused adjectives to describe the movement, but I'm serious, this watch is an absolute beaut! Check out the pictures and captions below of the detailing.

This specific type of dumb repeater is a British Stockten-type movement based on the mechanism underneath the dial. I don't have too much info on that, but feel free to look it up. At this point, some of you might be wondering what a dumb repeater (repeater a toc) is to begin with. Essentially, it is a repeater without gongs. Rather than hitting gongs and chiming, the hammers on this dumb repeater tap the dust cover that cause vibrations so the user can feel the time rather than hear it. I have seen other examples of the hammers tapping the actual case, too. This type of watch has also been referred to as an opera watch because its practical purpose back in the day was for the user to know the time without disturbing others around him in a dark environment. 

So what about Vulliamy? What makes the name so special? Unfortunately, the movement was probably not made by the Justin Vulliamy, the father of the Vulliamy family of watch and clock makers. A particularly unique aspect of Vulliamy watches is the code that Justin Vulliamy and Benjamin Gray devised as a "numbering" system. This movement is marked "x i s," which actually doesn't tell us much at all. This secret code has continued to elude understanding for centuries. What I can confirm, however, is that this movement dates before 1816, the year Vulliamy switched to a four-letter code.

Didn't have the watch in my possession for even a week, but the opportunity to own and examine this piece of horological history was fascinating. The history I learned from research further solidified my passion for this "old-man's" hobby.

*Working on getting the video up*

Full-capped balance with nice 
pierced and engraved parts

As someone mentioned to me, the diamond is truly of
jewelry quality with all the facets of a diamond you'd 
normally find in a ring

View of the hammers
(the polished metal part touching the main plate)

Close-up of the cylinder escapament

Unfortunately no hands :( 

Highly finished, polished repeater mechanism
 - still beautiful after 200+ years